How To Choose The Best Digital Photo Frame For You
First of all, you need to consider what you want from your digital photo frame. Regardless of how much you’re looking to spend, the images should look realistic and appear of a high quality on your display. You should be aiming for a high resolution , vibrant colors and a sharp focus. Be cautious of frames which display dull colors, low contrast and soft images.
You should also take account of how technical you are and where your photos are stored. Non-connected frames tend to be the easiest to use because you dont have to set up accounts or networks to transfer the images. Instead, you can insert camera cards or USB thumb drives directly into the frame and load up to 32GB of footage.
However, if you do opt for a connected frame, these offer much more flexibility in sourcing and sorting your images, whether from social media sites or directly from your phone. If your images are scattered on social media rather than concentrated on thumb drives, you will be better off with a connected digital photo frame.
Best iPhone Camera For The Money: iPhone Se 2nd Gen
With iPhone SE prices dropping in recent months, the phone is now one of the best iPhone cameras you can buy for the money. The second generation iPhone SE is like a souped up iPhone 8, but Apple added their latest camera feature Smart HDR which dramatically increases dynamic range in daylight photos. Smart HDR works for almost any type of photo you can take on the phone, including Portrait mode, panoramas, and yes, it even helps with video. This is why the iPhone SE 2nd Gen is hands-down the best iPhone camera for the money, whether youre looking to take photos or video.
The Galaxy S21 Has Autofocus For Selfies
Like photos from the iPhone’s main rear camera, its selfies have a warmer white balance. That will look more flattering for some skin tones than others. But the biggest difference comes down to focus. The iPhone 12’s front-facing camera, like most smartphone cameras, has a fixed focus. The Galaxy S21’s selfie camera has dual-pixel autofocus and can lock in on my eyes perfectly. That’s not to say iPhone 12 selfies aren’t in focus, but that the Galaxy S21 can nail a truly sharp focus.
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iPhone 13 Pro Review: Apples Very Best
Super-slick screen, better cameras with 3x optical zoom, good battery and speed make it tough to beat
The iPhone 13 Pro is a solid upgrade on last years model with a faster and slicker screen, a better camera with 3x optical zoom, longer battery life and a small price cut.
Apples latest Pro smartphone costs £949 , which is £50 cheaper than its predecessor but still near the top of the market. It sits between the standard £779 iPhone 13 and the £1,049 iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The 13 Pro has the same luxurious looking stainless steel and glass sandwich design as last year, but the camera bump on the back is significantly larger and the screen is brighter with a smaller Face ID notch.
The new ProMotion screen is a significant upgrade. It runs at up to a 120Hz refresh rate twice that of the regular iPhone 13 and makes scrolling and other on-screen motion significantly smoother, rivaling Samsungs very best. Faster-than-60Hz screens have been a mainstay of Apples iPad Pro line since 2017 and a feature of top Android phones since 2019s OnePlus 7 Pro. As with pin-sharp retina screens before them, faster screens are like a ratchet: once you use one it is very difficult to go back.
Zooming In On Details
On paper, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultras 10x periscope zoom camera gives the phone a notable advantage at long ranges, and this bears out in reality. Theres simply no competition at 10x the S21 Ultra is by far the most detailed. Although the iPhone 12 Pro Maxs software zoom holds up surprisingly well, providing youre shooting in bright light.
Zoom quality is much closer at 2x and 3x, where the two phones offer 2.5x and 3x telephoto lenses. Image quality follows the broad themes from earlier, with Samsungs zoom camera leaning more heavily on color saturation while the Apples camera ends up with a brighter exposure. Apple also seems to produce yellow-looking grass now and again, for some reason. Very close inspection again reveals that the Galaxy S21 Ultra is a little heavier on its sharpening pass, which helps extract a little extra detail. At the same time, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is softer and a little more natural-looking at 100%.
The more interesting battleground is at 5x a medium-range zoom level where both phones rely on software upscaling. Both phones look reasonably presentable at full-frame but definitely arent as sharp at 5x as they are at 3x or 10x in Samsungs case. Close inspection of 100% crops leads us to the same conclusions as before. Apples processing is more hands-off, resulting in softer, noisier-looking images without much detail. Samsungs processing is much harsher, sharping up details but leaving pictures with harsher edges and lines.
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Summary Of The iPhone 12 Pro Max
Overall, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the best camera system on an iPhone right now, allowing you to capture the best quality photo and video with great control and versatility. While the 12 Pro Max is the most flexible camera system, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best camera system for your needs.
We recommend the iPhone 12 Pro Max for content creators or amateur photographers because it offers the best creative control for both photo and video.
iPhone 13 Camera Changes: A Folded Lens Telephoto Camera
Perhaps the most attention on the iPhone 13’s potential camera improvements will focus on the telephoto lenses featured in the Pro models. This is an area where competitors like Samsung have clearly jumped ahead of Apple. The Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21 Plus, for example, support a 30x digital zoom, while the Galaxy S21 Ultra can ramp things up to a 100x zoom. The iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max are limited to 10x and 12x digital zooms, respectively.
“The area where Apple is obviously behind is at the high end with periscope zoom systems, where Apple is limited to 3x optical zoom and Samsung and Huawei flagships offer hybrid systems that produce good photos at 10x and usable pictures from even farther out,” Greengart said.
Apple could address that shortfall by turning to a folded lens camera of its own for its telephoto shooter, which gets around the limitations placed on the telephoto lens by the smartphones size. “With folded camera lens technology, you can design camera module with longer focal length while limiting the z axis,” Macudzinski said. “With such a design, the thickness of the smartphone is not any more a constraint for the focal length, but it still limits the sensor size and, to some extends to the lens aperture.”
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What You Need To Know
- DxOMark has released its camera reviews of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini.
- The outlet found very similar performance across photos and videos for each model.
- Both models achieved higher overall scores when compared to the iPhone 12 Pro.
For everyone who upgraded from an iPhone 12 Pro to an iPhone 13 mini, you’ve just been vindicated.
DxOMark has posted its camera review of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, and it appears that even Apple’s tiny iPhone has surpassed the iPhone 12 Pro in terms of photography and videography.
Both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini achieved a photo score of 138, three points higher than the iPhone 12 Pro last year. Each new model matches the photo performance of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which also scored a 138.
In terms of videography, the iPhone 13 and iPhone mini both achieved a video score of 117, five points higher than the iPhone 12 Pro. In this area, both new iPhones also beat the iPhone 12 Pro Max and its score of 113.
The only area where the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max still dominate is in the Zoom score. The older Pro iPhones scored 66 and 68, whereas the non-Pro phones scored a 55. This is obviously due to the fact that the iPhone 12 Pro includes a telephoto lens, a huge hardware advantage in this area.
Overall, the camera system in the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini matches that of the iPhone 12 Pro last year, largely due to that telephoto advantage.
iPhone 13
iPhone 11 Camera Night Mode
Night mode activates automatically should the iPhone 11 detect that youre shooting in low-light conditions. The phone will automatically decide how many seconds it needs to shoot for the ambient lighting conditions but you can take further control by tapping the night mode icon and using a slider at the bottom of the screen. You wont be able to set it to any longer than the automatic setting, but youll be able to set it to shorter if you prefer. The longest available speed will be determined by how much light is available in practice Ive not seen it reach any longer than around 4 seconds in most conditions. If you attach the iPhone 11 to a tripod itll automatically boost the time to the maximum available.
iPhone 11 vs Pixel 3 iPhone 11 vs Huawei P30 Pro
Its a little disappointing not to be able to use the ultra wide angle camera with Night mode something which you can do with the Huawei P30 Pro.
The results are impressive though especially when there is a just a little bit of light to work with. Its a clean and crisp effect which although is possibly a tad oversharpened, is rendered very well on the iPhone 11s screen. By contrast with the Huawei P30 Pro and the Pixel 3, the results are very good, indeed theyre very similar. There seems to be more detail retained with the P30 Pro, but thats something which is only hugely noticeable at larger sizes than a phone screen.
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Recommended By Our Editors
Which New iPhone Is Right for You? All 4 of Apple’s iPhone 12 Models ComparediPhone 12 Pro
Raw capture isn’t new to the iPhone, but it’s never worked alongside computational feature before. ProRAW promises to give you the best of both worldsall of Apple’s computational tricks, along with significantly more headroom for editing when compared with the HEIF format.
If you’re a photographer who loves to work on images in Lightroom or Capture One, but hasn’t bothered using Raw format on an iPhone before, there’s reason to get excited. The feature is promised for later this year.
What Are The Best Camera Phones
The new king of camera phones is the iPhone 13 Pro Max, followed very closely by the smaller iPhone 13 Pro. Featuring a triple 12MP setup with larger sensors on the wide and ultrawide cameras, plus 3x optical zoom on the telephoto lens, the new Pro models earn their names with spectacular photos and videos.
If you want to look beyond Apple’s phones, plenty of the best Android phones feature impressive cameras of their own. The Google Pixel 6 Pro, and the Pixel 6 next to it, are the new cream of the crop. The OnePlus 9 Pro, Galaxy S21 Ultra and even the lower-cost Pixel 5a all rely on multiple rear lenses and high-end photo processing features to deliver the best shots.
In fact, the Pixel 5a is our pick for those who really want to maximize their photography on-the-go but spend as little as possible Apple fans can turn to the iPhone SE, which is one of the best cheap phones out there, because it guarantees phenomenal image quality despite costing less than half the price of a premium device.
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iPhone 13 Pro And Pro Max Displays
The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max finally offer iPhone users a screen feature that flagship Android phones have had for quite a long time: higher refresh rates. Apples branding for its screen is Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion, and the important part is the ProMotion, which previously has only been on the iPad Pro.
Historically, the iPhone has been able to refresh its screen at 60Hz , but the new iPhone 13 Pros can vary the refresh rates from as little as 10Hz all the way up to 120Hz. Apple is using a type of OLED display called LTPO panel, technology first seen on Samsung phones. It has a wide dynamic range, can get much brighter, and also uses less power because it can ratchet down the refresh rate.
What all this means practically is that scrolling and animations look much smoother. It also has battery life benefits because if nothings moving on the screen, the screen needs to refresh less often and therefore uses less power.
Apple waited too long to introduce high refresh rate displays on its Pro phones, but it has implemented them well
None of this is news to Android users, but if you havent used a high refresh rate display on a phone before it can be a little hard to explain why it makes a difference. This is doubly true on iPhones, because Apple has gotten away with not putting a high refresh rate screen on an iPhone for so long because iOS is itself a very smooth OS without very much jank in its animations.
The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max
The iPhone 13 Pro Pays Dividends For Macro And Telephoto Shots
While the capabilities that have been baked into the base-level iPhone 13 camera are impressive, its the iPhone 13 Pro camera where the whole system is pushed to the next level. The sensors here may all have the same 12MP resolution, but they bump up their aperture values to f/1.5 for the wide camera and f/1.8 for the ultrawide camera. The 13 Pro also adds a 77mm-equivalent telephoto camera with a f/2.8 aperture, giving it a total of a 6x zoom range between the ultrawide and telephoto cameras. The telephoto cameras focal length makes it ideally suited to portrait photography, as well as for using a compositional tool.
Its the iPhone 13 Pro camera where the whole system is pushed to the next level.
Macrophotography is a big part of the iPhone 13 Pro, as its ultrawide camera can focus down to just 2 centimeters for super-close-up photos and video. The wide camera features a larger sensor, extremely bright aperture, and lidar scanner for exceptional lowlight photography and night mode portraits. Night mode is also now available in the telephoto camera, as well as in the ultrawide camera. Cinematic mode on the 13 Pro is also enhanced by these superior cameras and the addition of telephoto capabilities.
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How The New Hardware Makes Your Shots Better
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As one might expect, a lot of the focus in our testing was around the performance of the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro series. We quickly focused on testing in a real-world way as we noted above with selfies, photos of our pets, out and about at pandemic-safe events and with more advanced ones that incorporate multiple light sources. Since both of the phones featured a larger sensor, we wanted to dive deep on how that impacted images and video. Was there a noticeable difference? Did shots offer more details and improved lighting?
And with these side-by-side examples, the 13 did offer crisper images compared to the 12 and in some cases, some that were noticeable even to an untrained eye. Ultimately, its a step up that improves image quality but doesnt negatively impact how you take a shot. The 13 Pro or Pro Max had more direct improvements over its predecessor more details even when zooming in, dramatically better photos in low light or quite frankly dark images, improvements to core modes and just better natural portrait.
The iPhone 13 has more than 50% more light-gathering capabilities and stabilization compared to the 12, while the 13 Pro gets 2.2x improvement year over year.
This comes together to give the software more information to adjust the image properly. Its the explanation behind the more accurate colors and lighting sequences that we encounter in our tests.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Vs Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera Test: The Verdict
For most pictures, neither the Galaxy S21 Ultra nor iPhone 12 Pro Max will disappoint. The two phones provide the colors, detail, white balance, and flexibility we expect from premium tier smartphones. That said, there is a clear winner in my book when it comes to consistency across various scenarios: the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
Samsungs 2021 flagship smartphone caters to everything a demanding smartphone photographer could want. Exceptional detail when shooting at long range, a wide-angle camera thats mostly distortion-free, outstanding HDR and Night mode capabilities, and a main camera that keeps up in pretty much every environment. The Galaxy S21 Ultra does it all. Importantly, the phone has fixed the focusing issue that detracted from last years flagship. The handset still has a few issues, particularly with color saturation, oversharpening, and detail capture artifacts in some tricker shots. But its definitely Samsungs best camera phone in years and will likely be 2021s camera phone to beat.
If you have over $1,000 to spend on a flagship smartphone and are looking for the best camera package in the business, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra should be your pick. But what do you think about the photos taken with these two phones? Let us know in the comments below.
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